There was a tiff on Tuesday between Congress leaders Narayan Rane and Ashok Jagtap alias Bhai Jagtap over the appointment of the district president of Ratnagiri. Mr Jagtap opposed the name of Nilesh Rane, which hurt the senior Rane, who reprimanded Mr Jagtap in a meeting held at Gandhi Bhavan in the presence of state party president Ashok Chavan on Tuesday. However, all the leaders concerned claimed that it was not a rift, but a discussion on names.
Mr Chavan had called a meeting of the Ratnagiri and Nagpur district Congress committee to appoint a district president. According to a party insider, during the meeting, there was rift between Mr Rane, Mr Jagtap and Rajya Sabha member Husain Dalwai.
Four names were proposed for the post of the district president, including those of Mangesh Shinde, Ibrahim Dalwai, Sanjay Reddy and Nilesh Rane. The party insider said that Mr Jagtap opposed the name of Nilesh Rane as the party’s district president. His objections were that Mr Nilesh is an outsider since he is not from Ratnagiri, and that the party has already done more than enough for the Rane family. “‘There is no need to give the post to someone in the Rane family. We should choose some other person,’ he said in the meeting,” claimed the party insider.
When questioned, Mr Jagtap denied any rift but said that everybody has the right to suggest a name. “In politics, everybody has the right to push the name of his follower and I did the same. This does not mean that anything wrong happened in the meeting,” Mr Jagtap said.
He added that he did not push his own name. “I am from Mumbai, and no leader from Mumbai can bring justice to the district in Konkan,” he said. He suggested that the MPCC be asked to propose the names of aspirants.
Mr Rane disclosed the names of four aspirants and added that since some leaders have a loud voice, it may be misconstrued that a rift had taken place. “We had a discussion over names. Some leaders were opposed to some names and that’s why their voices might have been loud,” Mr Rane said.
